162 POLITICAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY, 1649-58
The decade of warfare had wrought havoc throughout Ireland,
and what the sword had spared famine and pestilence had
devoured.
Bad as the condition of the native Irish undoubtedly was,
parliament soon proceeded to make it worse. Except for the
comprehensiveness of their scheme for the settlement of Ireland,
there was nothing novel about it, for it was based upon the
plantation system that had commended itself to all rulers of
Ireland from the time of Philip and Mary. Indeed a step in
that direction had already been taken in 1642, when an act had
been passed confiscating two and a half million acres of the
holdings of Irish rebels, and allotting this land to those who
would 'adventure' money for the reconquest.1 To these original
creditors were now added the merchants and others who had
advanced cash or goods, and the soldiers whose heavy arrears
of pay were to be satisfied from forfeited Irish land. Thus the
parliament hoped at one and the same time to punish Irish
rebels, reward English soldiers, and "plant5 an honest people.
The act for the settling of Ireland (12 August 1652) exempted
from pardon for life and estate those who had had any part or
lot in the early stages of the rebellion beginning in 1641,
together with about a hundred Irish leaders mentioned by
name (Ormonde being the best known), and all who had slain
Englishmen except in open warfare. The leaders of the Irish
armies not comprehended in the first category were to be
punished and to lose two-thirds of their estates, and those who
had not manifested 'constant good affection' to the English
parliament were to forfeit one-third of theirs and to be liable
to transplantation,2 By a later act those in the last class were to
transplant themselves into the province of Connaught, or the
county of Clare, before i May 1654, under penalty of death as
spies and enemies.3 As a result of this legislation, it is said that
two-thirds of the land of Ireland changed hands. But, as hap-
pened in the case of Ulster fifty years before, the native Irish
were normally not transplanted, because the new owners of the
soil wanted them as labourers.
Apart from the permanent grievance of the land settlement,
Cromwell treated Ireland with an enlightenment far in advance
of his time. Free trade between the two countries was estab-
1 16 Car. I, c, 33, Statutes of the Realm, v. 168-73.
3 Acts and Ordinances, ii. 598-603, 3 Ibid., p, 750.